FRI 12/3/21
•Coming today on the front page: A debate on Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) chances of becoming House speaker as he struggles to manage Trump loyalists including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) over her defense of Rep. Lauren Boebert’s (R-CO) Islamophobic remarks.
November Unemployment Report – The U.S. added 210,000 jobs in November, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reports, as concerns loom over the omicron variant of COVID-19 and high inflationary pressures. Though the unemployment rate fell by 0.4 points, to 4.2%, the November job gains fall far short of the increase of 531,000 jobs in October, which was seen as a correction from tepid summer job gains as the delta variant of the coronavirus raged.
The BLS Friday noted gains in professional and business services, transportation and warehousing, construction and manufacturing. Retail trade employment declined.
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Government Shutdown Narrowly Diverted Again, to February – The Senate voted 69-28 late Thursday to extend funding of the federal government to February 18, narrowly avoiding a shutdown. Hard-line pro-Trump Senate Republicans had tried to remove funding for President Biden’s coronavirus vaccine policies, claiming they are “unconstitutional” and threatening American rights and jobs, The Washington Post reports.
Republican Sens. Roger Marshall, of Kansa, Ted Cruz, of Texas and Mike Lee, of Utah led the effort to remove funding for the vaccine policies but were unsuccessful, for now.
Earlier in the day, the House of Representatives narrowly passed the funding extension largely along party lines. Republicans and Democrats insisted they did not want to push the government toward a “fiscal cliff” even as the Senate came close to missing the deadline a day later, midnight Friday. The Republican amendment to remove funding for vaccination programs was narrowly defeated, 48-50.
We can look forward watching the same legislative train wreck again in February, when Congress must pass short-term legislation again on 12 appropriation bills that fund the government through fiscal year 2022, which ends in September. Then, with the same Congress in place through the end of the year, it will start all over again.
Note: For the Ted Cruz wing of the Republican Party, stifling any Biden White House success in ending the coronavirus pandemic and thus leading to economic recovery through the midterms to the 2024 presidential race appears to be the goal.
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Schiff Suggests Book Waives Executive Privilege – Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), one of nine members of the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection, says that former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows’ book may deflate attempts to avoid testifying before the panel, Politico reports.
Schiff says that “by discussing the events of January 6 in his book, if he does that, he’s waiving any claim of executive privilege.”
The Guardian first reported excerpts from Meadows’ upcoming book earlier this week, including a passage that says then-President Trump had tested positive for COVID-19 just before meeting Democratic candidate Joe Biden in Cleveland, September 29, for the first presidential debate.
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The Mueller Report: The Basement Tapes — A compilation of materials written by the team headed by Andrew Weissmann, a deputy to then-Special Counsel Robert Mueller, may be released, Politico reports, as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request filed by The New York Times and a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan by the news outlet. The materials did not make it into the final report.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Jude is quoted as writing: "Since Plaintiff filed its complaint, Defendant has located and begun processing this record and intends to release all non-exempt portions to Plaintiff once processing is complete.
"Defendant estimates that primary processing of the record will be complete by the end of January 2022 at which time Defendant expects to send the record to several other DOJ components for consultation."
Weissmann’s team had the responsibility of investigating Paul Manafort, former Trump campaign manager, who was convicted of a variety of felonies, including bank fraud and filing false tax returns, in trials in the Eastern District of Virginia and Washington, D.C. In a plea bargain, Manafort had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and witness tampering, but then was found of having violated the plea by lying to . . . Mueller’s investigators.
Manafort was sentenced to 43 months in prison for the first conviction and 73 months for the second (with 30 months concurrent with the first).
Trump pardoned Manafort in December 2020.
Note: Although nothing may come of this, it is certainly interesting to note what sort of people Trump is associated with. Let’s not overlook U.S. District Judge Linda V. Parker’s order that a group of nine lawyers — including Sidney Powell and L. Lin Wood — pay the state of Michigan and the city of Detroit approximately $175,000 for their “historic and profound abuse of the judicial process” in their effort to try to overturn the state’s 2020 presidential election results. (Remember Powell’s attorneys said, regarding her defense in the Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit, “No reasonable person would conclude that the statements [about how the machines and therefore the election were rigged] were truly statements of fact.”
It could be that things are going to be getting judicially tricky for Team Trump.
--Edited by Todd Lassa, Gary S. Vasilash and Charles Dervarics
THU 12/2/21
•A woman traveling from South Africa to the San Francisco area November 22 has the first known case of the omicron COVID-19 variant in the U.S. (NPR). She had been vaccinated, although not boosted, and is showing mild symptoms so far. Beginning next week, people traveling into the U.S., including Americans, will have to get tested one day before flying. Officials also have extended mask requirements for travel on public transportation to March 18.
•Stacey Abrams has announced she will run for the 2022 Democratic gubernatorial nomination in Georgia (WaPo). Abrams narrowly lost the 2018 race to Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and with helping Joe Biden win state’s 2020 Electoral College votes, as well as two Democrats in the Senate race runoffs.
Beginning of the End of Roe v. Wade – Whereas the throngs of protestors on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday comprised an undeterminable number of pro-choice and pro-life activists, the six conservative justices on the court indicated in their questions during oral arguments over Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that the right to an abortion will not be a federal right for long. The question is whether the court will rule narrowly to uphold Mississippi’s restriction on abortions after 15 weeks – prior to fetal viability according to medical experts – or whether the potential ruling will be a complete overturning of the court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling.
Chief Justice John Roberts appeared to be interested in a compromise ruling, asking Julie Rikelman, who argued for Jackson Women’s Health, “why would 15 weeks be an inappropriate line?”
Justice Brett Kavanaugh argued against stare decisis, the doctrine that precedent should determine legal decisions by citing SCOTUS cases in which the court overturned previous rulings, or set forth new Constitutional law, per SCOTUSblog, including Brown v. Board of Education (outlawing racial segregation in public schools), Baker v. Carr (one person, one vote), and Obergefell v. Hodges (same-sex marriage).
But Justice Sonia Sotomayor said overturning Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which in 1992 reaffirmed the earlier ruling’s right to abortions would require “strong justification” as “not much has changed” on the issue over 50 years.
“Will this institution survive the stench this creates in the public perception, that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts? I don’t see how it’s possible.”
Note: A decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is anticipated by next summer.
The decision could come at a fortuitous time for candidates supported by former President Trump -- whose three SCOTUS appointees are expected to favor the Mississippi law -- as they campaign toward next November’s midterms.
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Meadows’ Book: Trump Tested Positive for COVID Before Debate – Donald J. Trump tested positive for COVID-19 prior to his first debate against Democratic candidate Joe Biden in Cleveland, September 29, according to Mark Meadow’s upcoming book on his time as the ex-president’s chief of staff. As first reported in The Guardian each candidate was required to return a negative test 72 hours prior to the debate, but Trump, then 74, learned of his positive test just prior to leaving for the debate in Cleveland. (Biden was 77.)
“Nothing was going to stop (Trump) from going out there,” Meadows reportedly writes. After the debate, Trump returned a negative result from a different test, according to the report, but shortly after, on October 2, announced he had the coronavirus and entered the hospital.
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One of These Quotes is Satire – “Schools are a very appetizing opportunity. I just saw a nice piece in The Lancet arguing the opening of schools may only cost us 2-3% in terms of mortality. And you know, any life is a life lost. But to get every child in a school when they’re safely being educated and making the most out of their lives with a theoretical risk on the backside might be a tradeoff some folks would consider.” – Dr. Mehmet Oz, candidate for the GOP nomination for next year’s U.S. Senate race in Pennsylvania, in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity.
“Mr. President, I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed. I do say no more than 10 million-20 million killed. Tops.” – Gen. “Buck” Turgidson (George C. Scott), Dr. Strangelove, or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb (1964).
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Nic Woods